While exploring the world and the associated conservation issues I've been noting down my reflections and discoveries. Some posts are more organized while others are simple notes.

I generally focus on conservation issues effecting biodiversity, land use/abuse, research, and job opportunities that I have come across. Most of the opportunities come from the Opps page and you can click on the button below to take you there.

So many things. But to manage my ADHD: Raworth's new Planetary Boundaries model, Cave Bears and Fluorescent Minerals, and Telomeres.​New Planetary Boundaries Graphic – Doughnut EconomicsI don’t fully understand this yet but it looks really promising for answering my questions about Socio-Ecological Systems Theory, Planetary Boundaries, and Tragedy of the Commons issues. I just read Monbiot’s review of Raworth’s new book and immediately bought it on Amazon: Doughnut Economics. Also, look up Raworth: (https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/)

Cave Bears and Fluorescent Minerals

Cave Bear on the left, grizzly on right

I visited Clemson’s Botanical Garden Earth Day event yesterday and found the Bob Campbell Geology Museum. In that museum is a bunch of fun stuff but two things in particular caught my eye: a cave bear skull and glowing rocks. First, the cave bear. I am familiar with myths and stories of cave bears (Jean Auel!) and have been completely infatuated with their distant cousins – the North American Short-Faced Bears – but have never seen a cave bear skull. It’s huge. Like, huge huge. Easily twice as big as a modern grizzly but it looks like it was forged from steel and granite. Ursus spelaeus was a monster that died out about 24k years ago (the Short-Faced Bear, 10k years ago) and the depictions and renderings of it are the thing of nightmares.

Second, did you know that rocks can glow? I didn’t. I’ve been to Natural History Museums in every city I’ve travelled to on the globe and have never seen anything like this craziness. A smallish completely dark room with a bunch of rocks and minerals behind glass, lit up by a UV light. And then the rocks started glowing all kinds of crazy colors. It’s an acid trip. As a naturalist, I’ve had problems connecting with constellations, lakes, and geology. There’s something about them that doesn’t click and I don’t know why. But I took another step along the path to geology seeing this exhibit yesterday. According to geology.com/articles/fluorescent-minerals/: “Some minerals have an interesting physical property known as "fluorescence." These minerals have the ability to temporarily absorb a small amount of light and an instant later release a small amount of light of a different wavelength. This change in wavelength causes a temporary color change of the mineral in the eye of a human observer. The color change of fluorescent minerals is most spectacular when they are illuminated in darkness by ultraviolet light (which is not visible to humans) and they release visible light.”

TelomeresI’m reading this self-helpy/sciency book about how to stay healthy and happy: The Telomere Effect. Like several other books I’ve read it has its base in something scientific (like self-help books using neurochemicals or quantum physics to explain why and how you can be better…) explaining how to live a more fulfilling life. The science on this one is based on telomeres. I didn’t know what they were before this but it sounded interesting - so why not pick up the book? Getting into it and it reads like a bad self-help book but differently somehow – like they’re trying to be a bad self-help book. You can tell they’re trying to make things anecdotal and related to “real-life” stories. It occurred to me that this is either the lamest book ever or there is something really cool here and they are trying to make it make sense to the general public. I looked into the authors and Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn won the Nobel for her discovery of telomeres and was chastised by the Bush administration for her advocacy of stem cells in modern medicine. These people are geniuses and have found something super important for humanity and are trying to get discovery out of the weird realm of scientific articles and into the hands of everyday folk. I’m halfway through the book but quick synopsis so far:

To the best of my understanding, telomeres are the shoestring ends hanging off of DNA that can be short or long

The story of how they work and what they’re for is fascinating – look it up

Long telomeres are good, short telomeres speed up cell death

Don’t buy any telomere enhancing products – at best they’re a waste of money, at worse they work too well and can cause cancers